The present inventions are related to systems and methods for transferring information, and more particularly to systems and methods for determining problems related to a medium associated with a data transfer.
Various data transfer systems have been developed including storage systems, cellular telephone systems, radio transmission systems. In each of the systems data is transferred from a sender to a receiver via some medium. For example, in a storage system, data is sent from a sender (i.e., a write function) to a receiver (i.e., a read function) via a storage medium. The effectiveness of any transfer is impacted by any defects associated with the transfer medium. As an example, where the media is a storage medium, defects may be caused by a thinning of the medium or where an undesired particle is grown or embedded in the medium. In some cases, data loss caused by defects in the transfer medium can make recovery of data from the transfer medium difficult even for data received from non-defective areas or times.
Various approaches have been developed for identifying defects in the transfer medium. Such approaches provide a general ability to identify defects, but in many cases are inaccurate. In the best case, this inaccuracy limits the effectiveness of any defect identification. In the worst case, inaccurate defect detection may actually hamper the data recovery process. In other cases, information from a downstream process is used to perform the detection process. In such cases, there may be a substantial latency from the onset of a media defect until the media defect is flagged. This latency, if not properly considered, can result in improper attempts at circuit adaptation due to feedback used in existing data detection systems.
Hence, for at least the aforementioned reasons, there exists a need in the art for advanced systems and methods for defect detection.